Talk:List of British former child actors

List of films generates clutter

The list of films that accompanies each actor is cruft-bait. What is the purpose? To help readers identify the child actor? If it's solely for identification, then why does well-known actor Christian Bale need 30 examples under his name? Will we confuse him for someone else if we just wrote The Dark Knight Returns? The list has obviously gotten out of hand.

• Option 1: I think removing the examples entirely would be the best approach per the model at List of former child actors from the United States. The examples were removed in March 2014 with little controversy.
• Option 2: Another bold approach would be to get rid of the list entirely, redirecting to Category:Former child actors from the United Kingdom, obviously after tagging the individuals appropriately. Wikipedia after all is not a directory. This would be a bigger community project as there several similar articles across the project.
• Option 3: A less bold approach would be to limit the number of examples to three. This list article doesn't replace a filmography, and shouldn't endeavor to take IMDb's job.

And as with typical lists of this kind, names with no biographical article should be removed. We don't wish to encourage the addition of names unless notability had been properly established in an article. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:00, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I'M surprised that there is no mention of famous British child actors Andrew Ray; John Howard Davis and Anthony Wager, as well as juvenile Oscar winner Jon Whiteley. . DavidRayner (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 5 December 2018

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as proposed. bd2412 T 14:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

• List of former child actors from the United Kingdom → List of British former child actors
• List of current child actors from the United Kingdom → List of British current child actors
• List of child actors from India → List of Indian child actors
• List of child actors from New Zealand → List of New Zealander child actors List of New Zealand child actors
• List of child actors from the Netherlands → List of Dutch child actors

– To apply a demonym as with the recent RM for List of American former child actors. I moved all the other entries in Category:Lists of child actors by nationality, but these seem trickier, so I am submitting an RM for them. Is it OK to identify everyone from the UK as "British"? Is there a need to consider that "Indian" might be ambiguous? Is "New Zealander" appropriate? Can everyone in the Netherlands be considered "Dutch"? —BarrelProof (talk) 05:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:28, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment occupation lists use "New Zealand" as a noun adjunct (e.g. list of New Zealand actors, list of New Zealand writers). "New Zealanders" is only used in final position, e.g. lists of New Zealanders, list of Pakistani New Zealanders. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 08:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks for pointing that out. I support the suggested alternative, List of New Zealand child actors. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:47, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose List of current child actors from the United Kingdom to List of British current child actors from the United Kingdom as it is a bit daft to say British and United Kingdom in the same title none of the others use that construct and you have not for example offered List of Dutch child actors from the Netherlands or List of American child actors from the United States. MilborneOne (talk) 00:37, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Daft indeed; that was a copy-paste error. Thank you for noticing that. I fixed it. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:39, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks oppose struck, no strong view on others. MilborneOne (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose all proposals for the time being: This (and the other renaming proposals) sounds like it has the potential to cause confusion about ethnicity and citizenship. Saying that someone is from the United Kingdom isn't the same thing as saying they are British. A person can apply for citizenship in another nation and reject other citizenship. India doesn't allow dual citizenship--so if someone was born in India and was a child actor in India, but later became an American citizen, we'd have to remove them from the list of Indian child actors, I guess? Unless we actually mean someone who is ethnically Indian? It seems like we're changing the scope of all of these lists without discussing that. Also, I don't like the idea that I have to go to a dozen talk pages to make this argument. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:44, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, if that is the objection, we may need to revisit the renaming of the other related articles and the RM discussion at List of American former child actors. Personally, my impression is that using the demonym in this manner is typical for Wikipedia, and that any need for clarification of what is meant can be clarified within the list articles. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:50, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I also don't think the previous form was much different on ethnicity and citizenship either. In my view, being a New Zealand child actor, an Indian child actor, a Dutch child actor, or a British child actor does not imply citizenship or ethnicity, and neither does being a child actor "from" one of those countries. Being "from" a place and being of a certain ethnicity or citizenship are three very different concepts. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are examples that come to my mind. If I understand correctly, many of the people born in those countries (e.g., the children of imported laborers) are not granted citizenship and are not ethnically descended from that area, but I think it is certainly accurate to consider them as being from those countries and also to apply the country's demonym to them to some degree. I think that the introduction of each article should include some statement about what criteria are used for including someone in the list, and possibly the individual entries could also clarify the type of association. Personally, I would tend toward being relatively inclusive for constructing the lists – adding some parenthetical clarification where it seems needed. If someone was born and spent the first twenty years of their life in Saudi Arabia, I think it is appropriate to include them in a list of Saudi Arabian people even if they are ethnically Indian or Thai and are not recognized as citizens by the government of Saudi Arabia. If that person had one parent that was ethnically Indian and another parent that was ethnically Thai, I would probably put the person in all three lists, regardless of the naming of the lists. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    • You're correct, the previous version didn't take a stance on ethnicity or citizenship. It only described a child actor's birthplace. This is why I think it is the better phrasing. But with the proposed change, now we're making it about ethnicity and citizenship, and doing so in an ambiguous way. Ex: Is an Italian merely a citizen of Italy, or a person of ethnic Italian heritage? Another example of anticipated problems: Nicole Kidman was born in the US, but was raised in Australia. If she holds dual-citizenship, is Nicole Kidman a former American child actor, or a former Australian child actor? Does she go in both lists? Another complication: Does she get credit for being an American child actor if she didn't land any roles until she was a teen in Australia? Is this something we'll have to debate for each entrant? "List of former child actors from ___" seems like it's way less trouble. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:53, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
      • I don't think the proposed form takes any clear stance about ethnicity or citizenship either. I don't think that changing the name of the list necessarily impacts the inclusion question. I would personally put Ms. Kidman in both the American and Australian lists, regardless of whether the list name is "from Thatcountry" or "Thatcountrian". And I would probably include, in the list of Italians and people "from Italy", both a person of Thai heritage who was raised in Italy and a person of Italian heritage who was raised in Thailand. I might also add some parenthetical comment about the person in such cases. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:46, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
        • "I don't think the proposed form takes any clear stance about ethnicity or citizenship either." Well, yeah, that's part of my argument, actually, that the article title is vague, leading readers to have to speculate as to whether we mean Indian/Italian/Thai by ethnicity, citizenship, or by birth place. That's three elements of ambiguity. And your proposal that we add supplementary comments to clarify what we mean seems like a lot of work when we can just simplify the scope of the list article. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
          • I don't think "from Thatcountry" is only about birthplace either. I think that Russell Thaw (who was a child actor born of American parentage while his mother was living in Germany and who was then raised primarily in the United States) was both "from Germany" and "from the United States". I think the number of cases that could be questionable would be very small, and easily handled by parenthetical remarks. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support since you already moved the rest move these too עם ישראל חי (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support – A logical rationalisation per WP:CONCISE. RGloucester — ☎ 01:50, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. All fine and common names. If there was something wrong with them we'd have to rename thousands of disambiguated biographical article titles! -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:20, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.